WILLODEAN (THE CUPITOR CHRONICLES Book 1)

by Fowler Robertson

  In the days that followed dark spirits entered our home. I could feel them hovering in me, over me, around me. They were darker that I’ve ever seen them. They hoisted me to their crippled lair. In the haven of my mind, inside the Dumas of Umbra, I revisited the past, and the secrets I hid in the interminable labyrinth of rooms and hallways. Everything was multiplications of three. Three stories, thirty three bedrooms, three staircases, three bathrooms with jungle waterfall as showers and turquoise pools as baths. I’d float in the glistening water of the darkness and stare into the roof which had no ceiling, only a dark sky of night with three moons and 333, 333, 333 stars. It was my safe, unhindered world, a world I built to live, to exist when I couldn’t bear to breathe in the other one. It was my safety. Life had no meaning, it was uneventful, and insignificant. Time did not exist there. While taking occupancy in the house, I’d get lost in the maze of doors, windows and hallways and end up in the crackle room where the little girl lived. The girl I had forgotten, denied, mistreated, even though she deserved much worse punishment. She would get attached and barely let me leave without her. I’d flee out the door, her running behind me, screaming, beating on the door wanting out, wanting to be free, wanting to live.

  “No.” I’d say. “You cannot come out.” She was unable to take no for an answer. She’d sneak into my nightmares and daydreams to haunt me with her screams, her whispers. Not only did I have to deal with her, I had to deal with Branson and he was never going to forgive me for slapping him. I was the damaged girl, the crazy woman. He came and went and paid me back with his drinking, his anger, his cheating, his words, his actions and then his favorite. The one that got the most attention. He threw out the dead zone. My childhood bedfellow. It drove me mad. Madder than mad. Seconds pass. Days pass. Months pass while I sit in the dead zone. The hell clock ticks. The kite is grounded, broken, stored away. I make my bed. I live the lie.

  Bloody President

  When adults tell me not to do something—it’s the only thing I want to do. It should be proven knowledge to adults, but for some reason, they continue to taunt us and make us get in trouble. For me, it’s the broken knob inside my head, clicks to rebel mode and cannot be shut off until the carnal act is committed, so sayeth James Dean. Just a mere five minutes ago, Dell told me not to go in Maw Sue’s bedroom and normally I wouldn’t think of it, because it’s haunted. Two of Maw Sue’s husbands died inside that room. Uhh...creepy. But nonetheless, it niggles at me. I stop on the dirt trail to speculate, about twenty-five yards from Maw Sue’s house. The rickety old porch seems off kilter as if it’s brooding. Within a matter of seconds, I find myself standing on its squeaky planks. It’s disturbingly quiet—almost too quiet, as if something shattered leaving behind the engulfing void, a holy hush after a prayer, that fraction of a second where hope lingers unsettled in chaos, undefined. Goose bumps rack my skin. I don’t know whether to run for my life or drop to my knees in confession. Instead I run inside. Eeeekk. Eekkkk. Swaaaaccckkkk. Bam! Clang! Clang! The rickety screen door wails behind me, while the bells sound out my entrance in warning. My heart leaps for the thousandth time. There is a foreboding preeminence in the air around me.

  Walking into Maw Sue’s house was like entering a box of pastel crayons, plus it held oodles and oodles of horrors. Every room is a different color; pink, powder blue, lime green, yellow and red. She swore the whole house was a mammoth gray, proof that she’s color blind. I tip toe across the floor—trying not to wake the dead. The house has its own language, the floor sinks, moans and bellows under my feet followed by a repertoire of low creaks and whistles, squalls and scurries, and other unmentionables. This house had the ability to bring my nightmares vividly alive, as if I’d given them permission to act themselves out, which I didn’t. Since I have the gift, everything is magnified, intensified to the hilt, almost unbearable. It is days like this I wish to be normal with no gift whatsoever. I wish I was a sleeper, bland and boring, dull as dirt and filled with the world and all its glory and guts of materialistic gore. But according to Maw Sue we don’t get to pick our gifts. It is preplanned, uniquely written and designed for a purpose uniquely for our timing.

  ***

  I was five when my innocent ears absorbed material not found in the local library. Maw Sue read from the ancient scrolls, ancestral journals, and Cupitor almanacs. At school, I shared the stories I heard which only got me into trouble. I didn’t realize they were an abundance of sleepers, chosen, yet not awakened to their gifts. Cupitor’s are visionaries beyond the visions, rushing ahead, acquainted with sorrows and imminent dangers, always risking, exploring, and seeking. And that’s the problem. My teachers became annoyed with my chatty tall tales and told me children were not supposed to repeat everything they heard and maybe I was a little bit too grown up for my own good. I defended my family tree with rebellious certitude which led to my desk being dragged outside the class. I’d have to watch people walk up and down the sidewalks all day while I wrote five hundred ridiculous sentences.

  I will not make up unbelievable stories and fabricate them as true.

  The whole time I’m breaking pencil lead and cursing under my breath. “Horseshit! Stupid sleepers. What do they know? I am a Cupitor by God.” For some reason, the teachers did not agree.

  ***

  I crept through the kitchen when a loud clicking sound froze me. It was getting closer and louder. I imagined one of her ghostly husbands slithering around the corner. It wasn't a ghost but a ball of white fluff and growl. Her ugly mutt Peppy skids in attack mode until he realizes it’s me. He went from chew-leg-off mode to lick-to-death mode. Peppy was atrocious. He suffered a horrible hair condition, a mass of curls half-white, half-dingy yellow and half gray-blue in color. The blue was the old lady hair dye Maw Sue said would make him white, which only made him an eyesore.

  “Hey, boy.” I said bending down to pet him. His sad pink eyes looked up at me and that’s when I noticed the red trail on the floor. It was red paw prints, trails in circles and loops and zig-zags. “Have you gotten into paint, boy? Maw Sue’s gonna flip out if you did.”

  I searched for evidence of paint but found nothing. Peppy followed me around, stopping at my feet and looking up at me. My thoughts rumbled and then my feet shifted or maybe it was a warning from the house inside me quaking, reminding me of doors better left shut.

  “She’s not coming home Willodean.” The shadow hissed slaying me with his awful words.

  “No. No. That’s not true. Stop it. Go away.” I said out loud. Crushing monologues filled my mind, brutal information, routing and rerouting down massacred lanes, rights and wrongs, should I, maybe so, better not, Pandora’s box, the wicked witch is dead, curiosity killed the cat, lions, tigers and bears, OH MY! It was horrible. I absolutely despise that my mind can go from ice cream to death in a split second.

  The next thing I know—I’m standing in front of the dreadful door. It’s only five feet away but it looks like a mile. No Willodean. Do not go in the bedroom. But why? What are they hiding? Inside me a line of circuits are fizzling, tossed, turned, and shorted out. Click. Knob on. Mission forward. No turning back. I have no idea who will win. Sometimes I wonder if I’m involved at all or just a vessel for destruction, a vacant house possessed by voices, a toy to be dismantled, a spirit without say-so, an empty crackle shell left clinging to a wooden post.

  Stay out. Don’t go in. You heard Dell.

  Yes, Do it. Who cares what she said. Go inside. Do it.

  No. Don’t. Remember…

  Yes. Do. Go in. Go. Go. Go.

  The doorway looks further and further away and my peripheral views are distorted. The long treacherous hallway is narrow with slick floors as if I’m sliding, closer and closer without taking a step. Before I know it—I’m on the other side of the door as if a benevolent force pushed me in. I am frozen in horror, a scream crawled up my throat but never left my lips. I was free falling, fighting air, pressing against it but falling, falling yet standing, immovable. An engag
ing scent attacks my nostrils. Copper pennies, metallic, and sour. My tongue curls. My senses go on high alert, engaged with the nightmare in front of me. Whir, whir, and whir. The box fan in the window takes my heart rhythm, and mocks it, the revolving blades banding together, pulling me into their unsettling place, inside the hollow spaces, between the whir and the surging beats of my own blood. I enter that place of unspeakable terror, a desolate island where a soul is left in anguish and irrevocable sadness of the horrors left behind. I come undone with the vision before me. The feather bed is a scattered field of wild flowers with pot holes of blood, some dried, some shiny and lacquered. The feather pillow is a freshly puffed up grave with droppings of brown blood and behind it, the white antique headboard, a tombstone with a last epitaph of brush strokes, deep slashes and swirls. Next to the bed, on the nightstand was the dreaded Mason jar, reminders of Aunt Raven and being alone—dying alone. It had tipped over and spilled out the Immortelles', the everlasting. The yellow flower Maw Sue plucked in remembrance of her, after her death lay amongst the fallen. The remaining tribes of my forefathers lay in a rainbow of ethnic petals, pink, yellow, red and orange and drizzled with blood as if they had been sacrificed on an altar. The dried flowers like mangled corpses in piles, arms leafy and wilted, tossed and twisted with petal faces wrinkled and long overdue for the grave, spent and dried up from a war. An army of petal faced soldiers lying next to peppermint candy bombs. Hanging above the nightstand in a gold frame is a picture of Maw Sue and Jefferson Starbuck. I loved that picture and had never seen Maw Sue so happy but now their stoic faces turn foggy and then a pasty white with hollow eyes. They are confined within the frame and reach to get out but can’t as if they are stuck in time. Now I’m seeing Dresden’s. This can’t be good. No. It's a painting Willodean. It's not real. THIS is not real.

  I grab my face to wipe the pictures from my eyes and yet they remain, taunting me with sights and sounds. And then I realize what I’m seeing, the full capacity of the room, evidence left behind, terrible awful evidence. What happened here? Did Maw Sue do this? Where is she? Do the shadows have her? My mind rambled. I fear they have succeeded to take what I love. They have killed Maw Sue and the frame is reminding me, of what’s to come, my fate, my destiny. I am racked with shakes and palpitations as time slowed to a crawl. Fears, deep fears. Tick—tock. A chill riveted up each bone. Tick—tock. Tick—tock. The ticking hammer slam was annoying, a brutal crush to the skull between my ears. My eyes search the room to turn it off. There he is, father time, sitting in the midst of the petal soldiers and candy bombs. It is a round Deco west clock, gold in color with a clear facing and twin bells. There were two streaks of blood in straight lines, distinctly crossing; one at 2 and the other at 8. Underneath the clear facing, the clocks slender black hands moved in a shiver, a vibrating terror as it crossed the blood splattered trail. It relived the terror of what happened here, every hour on the hour. I became a prisoner of sights, and sounds in extreme mode, clashing and banging and ticking and whirring.

  Rewind. Go backwards. Take it all back. Start over. Un-see. Un-do. Un-hear.

  God. Willodean, why did you open the door? You never listen. What is seen cannot be unseen. Don’t you know that by now? What is heard cannot be unheard. You can’t return now. It’s too late. Father time does not rewind. Don’t you know that? No returns. No repeats. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

  “Forward!” The voice screamed. I spun around frightened beyond measure. I saw no one. I felt a dull thud stare into my back and slowly turned around. I thought for sure it’d be Aunt Raven’s ghost rising up from the yellow dried flower petals. But instead, it was George. He was there, just like he’d always been, standing behind the deco clock, towering upwards in a graceful poise with a high neck and chiseled chin. A noble air of dignity held his firm stance, unpretentious, and confident. The George Washington lamp was antique, older than me and Maw Sue put together. George stood tall, unaffected by the terror in his midst as if the petal soldiers lying at his feet were casualties of war, a consequence of battle. His white wig was dotted with red blood spots, while a few streaks flanked the outskirts of his straight nose. He stood in his common stance known to all who study history, his legs firmly grounded and sure footed, same trademark facial expression, chin lifted high, and his eyes on the horizon, arm stretched out and finger pointed forward. By the mere sight of him you’d think the Delaware River was right outside these walls and he was commanding his troops ahead.

  “Forward!” He said again, more dominant. I trembled. Why am I seeing and hearing all of this? Father time, as if not to be outdone, clicked his way in, slashing seconds and minutes of my life away, tick tock. I was trapped inside myself, inside the house, inside me, much like a cement statue, like George, unable to move, yet seeing, hearing, and feeling. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Whir. Whir. Whir. Forward! Forward!

  The derangement of the room merged with the madness of me, and formed an alignment and I could not take it anymore. My eyes grew wild and dangerous. I lunged at the gold clock. I smashed it against the wall. It exploded in tiny pieces of wires and coil springs. Copper pins and metal pieces fell on the open bible sitting next to George’s foot pedestal. For a few seconds, the ticking stopped. The bible was flipped open to Psalms 23. I drew closer to the pages until my eyes formed a pin light on the words underlined in deep rigid red marks as if someone dipped their fingernails in blood and used it as a writing instrument. I read the words to myself, my mind taking refuge and horror in the pronouncement of their meaning.

  …the shadow of death.

  …fear no evil.

  …for you are with me.

  Three lines, twelve words. Tick. Tock. Whatever terrible, horrible had entered this room, the almighty God sat amongst them. Whir, whir, whir. A part of me was soothed by this information and a part of me was terribly afflicted. Even in the cruelest of inhumanities, it says we shall not go out alone. In the evil that abides around us, we shall not go out alone. The sharp metallic scent of blood mixed with the sweet humid air, and the peppermint bombs made me queasy. On my third gagging reflex I could hear the commander yelling.

  “Forward!” George screamed. His hand pointed the way, his blue eyes pierced the darkness of our vision like shiny swords, slashing the way out... for me, for him.

  “Forward! Forward!” My heart pounded. The images inside my head were almost too much, the house shaken and stirred to prick unimaginable fears, Maw Sue dead, tortured, shocked. How else to explain the massacre that took place here? Is she lifeless now, leaving only her blood behind? Is she as dead as Aunt Raven's rose petal stem, dead as all the other petal people, the ancestors they represent? Is she as dead as the prophets who wrote the gospel, leaving only words and spirits behind?

  I fear I will be next. It is the inevitable curse. I want to set the clock backwards, repair and rewind Father time to the past, to redo, to make a different decision, un-see, un-hear, unsay, undo, unborn. The clock is scattered across the floor, dismantled, motionless, soundless but the internal clock of regret, inside the house, inside me, took life from me in tiny increments of horror. Tick. Tock.

  “Forward!” His voice shrieked and split my eardrums. I bolted out the door, through the living room, and past the kitchen to the outside porch. Peppy barked and scratched the mesh with his paws. I jumped over the stairs and hit the hard dirt.

  “Forward!” I could still hear George screaming in warning. And this time, I listened. I obeyed the bloody president. I ran and I never looked back.

  Hope Chest Hope

  The rectangular atrocity sits in my bedroom. Its maple wood, three foot long and eighteen inches wide, with intricate carvings and unusual metal clasps and hinges. The hope chest was a sweet sixteen present from my parents. Housewife Lena went on and on, about how I could fill it with household goods and kitchen items to save for when I get married and she did it in front of my friends. The horror. I was embarrassed to death all the while stuck in Betty Crocke
r hell while Lena explained one too many times how the blender worked. She went into detail, how it had state of the art turbo blades to chop, mix, and blend. Can it run away and take me with it? She would not shut up. On and on about stupid stuff, wedding anniversaries, recipes and holidays, a Goddamned horror movie I couldn’t rewind. I wanted to pick up the eight inch, state of the art, jagged cook’s knife and stab myself in the chest.

  “And that’s why they call it a hope chest.” Lena said glancing at my friends and then me. I cringed. My eyes glazed over into wicked witch mode. I wanted to melt her on the spot and erase this day from memory. Blink. Open eyes. Nope. Didn't work. I'm still here. And she was still talking. God help me. Her voice was bubbly as if everything that existed for a woman could only be found inside the matrimony of marriage, inside a freaking hope chest. Jesus ever loving kitchen Christ! My thoughts orbited out of the room. I’m not even out of school and she’s trying to marry me off. I haven’t had a boyfriend yet? Not one. Not even a kiss. What’s the big deal anyway? What if I don’t want to get married? What if I want to tour the world? How am I going to lug that monstrous thing up the Great Wall of China? What good is a kitchen blender on a mountain top? Is she serious? JESUS! This might be Lena Hart’s life—but it was not going to be mine.

  Let's just say sweet sixteen wasn't sweet. Today, the hope chest follows me where ever I go, a kitchen curse I can’t outrun. It’s pressed against the wall like an unfulfilled prophecy with expectations I failed to live up to, my cross to bear, lugging it back and forth and we have the same identifying marks, scars, bangs, scratches, nicks and cuts. I used to open the lid and scream into it.